Kicking Butt: Against All Odds in a Man's World with authors Samina Ali, Anita Amirrezvani, Janis Cooke Newman, Donna Woolfolk Cross and Book Group Maven Barbara Mead.
book group expo is the first event of its kind that delivers a two day salon experience designed especially for book lovers.
Book group members and avid readers have a chance to meet some of their favorite authors, discover a literary treasure or three that they've never heard of before, and meet and connect with people in other book groups - or start a new one.
Bio
Samina Ali
Samina Ali was born in Hyderabad, India and emigrated with her parents to America when she was six months old. Growing up, she spent half of each year in India, where she also attended school. In 1993, she graduated summa cum laude from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities with a B.A. in English. She received an M.F.A. from the University of Oregon.
Among other places, her writing has appeared in rattapallax 8, Words Matter: Conversations with Asian American Writers, Literacy Matters: Reading and Writing in the Second Wave of Multiculturalism, and Our Feet Walk the Sky. She lives in California with her son.
Anita Amirrezvani
Anita Amirrezvani was born in Tehran and grew up in the United States. When she was fourteen years old her father let her choose a carpet for herself, and the old and beautiful rug she selected led her to imagine the lives of the people who might have designed and created it. Out of that experience comes her first novel.
Donna Woolfolk Cross
Donna Woolfolk Cross graduated cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Pennsylvania in 1969 with a B.A. in English. She moved to London, England, after graduation, and worked as an editorial assistant for a small publishing house on Fleet Street, W.H. Allen and Company. Upon her return to the United States, Cross worked at Young and Rubicam, a Madison Avenue advertising firm, before going on to graduate school at UCLA where she earned a master's degree in Literature and Writing in 1972.
In 1973, Cross moved with her husband to upstate New York where she began teaching writing in a college English Department. Now writing is her fulltime career.
She is the author of two books on language, Word Abuse: How the Words We Use Use Us and Mediaspeak: How Television Makes Up Your Mind. She is the coauthor of Speaking of Words and Daddy's Little Girl.
The product of seven years of research and writing, Pope Joan is her first novel. She is now at work on a new novel set in 17th century France.
Janis Cooke Newman
Janis Cooke Newman is the author of the Bay Area Bestseller, Mary (MacAdam/Cage, 2006), a historical novel about Mary Todd Lincoln, chosen as both a Booksense Pick for October 2006 and a Booksense Year-End Pick Highlight, as well as The Russian Word for Snow (St. Martin's Press, 2001), a memoir about adopting her son from a Moscow orphanage. Her writing has also appeared in numerous anthologies, including Secret Lives of Lawfully Wedded Wives (Inner Ocean, 2006) and four Travelers' Tales editions.
She is also a travel writer, whose stories have been published in a number of newspapers and magazines, including the LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Backpacker.